Best books, and worst books, that you read in 2007

I'm going to name my best and worst, in fiction and non-fiction. Completely subjective and meaningless.

Maybe it's better titled, most favorite/memorable, and least favorite/memorable.

Have at it, folks. Don't overthink it, go with your gut! Keep descriptions short, this might be a fun thread to refer back to for new reads in '08!

Fiction:

BEST: The Scarlet Letter An oldie but goodie that I really ate up.

WORST: A Canticle for Liebowitz Everything that I hate about sci-fi in one book.

Non Fiction:

BEST: Constantine's Sword: The church and the jews, a history Wonderful prose and eye opening history.

WORST: Refuting Evolution I make myself read these things, but ugh.

This is difficult for the best.

WORST: easily 90 minutes in Heaven the only reason I finished was because it was part of my 50 list.

BEST: Probably Cell by King. It was one of the latest so it's close to my heart. Although HP 7 is a close second if not a tie.

Hmmm, let me go look at my list.

FICTION

Best: Middlemarch by George Eliot
Worst: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

NON-FICTION

Best: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Worst: Red Zone Blues by Pepe Escobar

Best non-fiction: Either Thunderstruck or The Devil in the White City, both by Erik Larson. Larson makes history so accessible.

Worst fiction: The Whims of Creation by Simon Hawke. Hawke tried to blend science fiction and fantasy and ended up with something that was neither fish nor fowl.

Best fiction: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Somehow I managed to make it thru high school and college (with a degree in English) without ever reading this. I now know what I was missing.

I'm with clam, it doesn't get better than Middlemarch.

Worst, hmmm, probably Cryptonomicon. blech.

Best: Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. It blew me right out of the water.

Worst: Minion by L.A. Banks. I have no idea why I even finished it.

Worst Fiction. A toss up between The Fig Eater and The Poe Shadow

Best Fiction, The Road with a special mention for HP Book 7

Best Non-Fiction A Year in The Life of William Shakespeare 1599

Worst, Favorite Brand Name Classic Mexican Recipes

Ummm, for better or worse, some books just stood out.

FICTION

BEST: Hardest of all to decide. I'm just going to say Dreamsongs. I haven't even finished it but I love George RR Martin and it's good to read anything by him.

WORST: Naked Came the Phoenix This was written by some of the best women writers in print today. Each took a chapter. But it seems like they didn't read the previous chapter before writing their own. The story line is all over the place. Terrible.

NONFICTION

BEST: Hands down, Savage Beauty Edna St Vincent Millay's biography. About 800 pages of letters, pictures, quotes, interviews, all of it intriguing, captivating, juicy dirt. And it didn't matter that it all happened 80 years ago.

WORST: Collecting Rare Books not really about antiquarian book collecting, more about this guy just talking and talking and talking AND talking about himself. *yawns widely*

Don't over think it? O.K., here goes, but I stand on my rights to change my mind at any moment.

BEST NONFICTION: Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L'Engle A toss up with my Winston Churchill, but this one was moving and touched my heart.

WORST NONFICTION: How I Found Livingston in Central Africa by Henry M. Stanley Too boorish for my modern mind.

BEST FICTION: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (best new author discovery), Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers (best reread) and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin (best classic I never read before)

O.K., so I fudged up there.

WORST FICTION: James Fenimore Cooper's Works, vol. 5 Yaaaaaawn.

What a great idea for a thread!

Best Fiction: Time Traveler's Wife with honorable mentions to The Lovely Bones and DH

Worst Fiction: Gotta agree on The Poe Shadow. Bleh.

Best Non-Fiction: The Glass Castle hands-down

Worst Non-Fiction: and I say this grudgingly because the book has its good points -- The Killing of Major Denis Mahon. I read an advanced reader's copy, so the widely released version may be better, but I really had to trudge through this one.

Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (NF) for the best, and Messenger (F, 3rd book of Lois Lowry trilogy) for the worst.

Best was Elantris by oh gee now I forget who the author is, heee heeee.

Easily the worst was Me and DiMaggio by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. The book really had almost nothing about Joe DiMaggio, and should have been called Me Pretending To Be A Sportswriter and Annoying Everybody. He only used DiMaggio's name in the title to trick people into buying it. Disgraceful.

Lots of books vying for best this year. In the end I have to say...

Parable of the Sower

with honorable mentions to The Name of the Wind and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I don't know that I didn't like any books I read this year. I'm easily satisfied.

*blushes at accidental innuendo*

Good thread.

Best fiction: it's a tie between The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Our Gang by Philip Roth.

Worst fiction: Bleachers by John Grisham. One of his worst ever.

Best nonfiction: tie between Measuring the Universe by Kitty Ferguson and The Prester Quest by Nicholas Jubber.

Worst nonfiction: Fear This by Anthony Suau and Chris Hedges. Really disjointed.

Best for 2007 would have to be either Mystic River or She's Come Undone

Worst fiction: Border Fire by Amanda Scott with Loving by Danielle Steel coming in close behind her!

Not enough non-fiction read to mention best or worst. I read 3 with 1 being a psychology type, a true-crime and the third being a travel memoir.

Touchstones don't seems to be working right now.

Fiction
Best: I have no way to scale it down to one. There's 5 contenders, and then I have to take a way a whole series as it's the series as a whole that's good - not a single book. It's been a very lucky year for me, that way. The 'winners' are The Lions of Al-Rassan and Cyteen, with Elantris, A song for Arbonne, and Merchanter's Luck (or Finity's End or Tripoint) as runners up.
The discounted series is Foreigner.

Worst: Anansi boys. It got so cliché I had to stop reading.

Non-fiction
Best: Behind the curtain: Football in eastern europe, with Transit maps of the world as a runner up.

Worst: IT ur ett affärsperspektiv (Infotech from a business perspective). Be glad it's not translated to english! I had to stop on page 17, mostly because of the real real bad editing.

Best Fiction: Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan. Best new author for me in 2007 hands down.

Worst Fiction: The Rising by Brian Keene. I love zombie fiction, but this was so bad that not only did I throw the book away, I chose not to include it in my yearly reading tally. Blech.

Best Non-fiction: The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. Fascinating story of the founding of Australia.

Worst Non-fiction: None. I was lucky this year, and enjoyed all the non-fiction I read.

FICTION

Best: White Oleander by Janet Fitch. There was so much I could relate to.

Worst: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollet. I picked it at random from 1001 Books but couldn't get past the first sentence, much less the first page.

NONFICTION

BEST: Stiff by Mary Roach. I gagged and giggled my way through it.

WORST: Scrapbooking Your Faith by Courtney Walsh. First, it should have been named, Scrapbooking Your Christian Faith. Second, it was boring and unimaginative. Taking pictures of a bunch of boring scrapbook pages and listing the components does not teach me anything.

FICTION:

Best: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Yeah, it's not great literature, but there was no more pleasurable read than this - knowing my friends were reading it, sharing with them, the anticipation, the midnight purchase, etc. All that was a joy.

Worst: Pontoon Gads, enough already.

NONFICTION:

Best: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War I just picked this off the shelf as a whim, and it is one of the best pieces of non-fiction I have read this century. Your understanding of 18th-20th century French history will change dramatically with this read.

Worst: The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor Pompous predictions peeve pragmatic perusers.

Everyone -

For your worst books, why did you finish them?

My two worsts I did not complete - but I am curious as to the reasons to plod through unintersting (optional) books.

Mostly, i didn't. Mainly, because they had to go back to the library.

Because they weren't THAT bad. LOL They were just the worst of what I finished! Besides, one of my worsts was for a book club, and the other I had to review for the LT Early Reviewers group.

I did finish both of the ones I mentioned. In their case I kept waiting for it all to come together, which they didn't. I don't always finish them. Irish Lace is an example of one that not only didn't I finish, but literally tossed across the room in disgust.

I usually finish a book good or bad, although sometimes I feel like my life is draining away...those I don't finish. ;)

I didn't have to think long about this one:

Best: By Night Under the Stone Bridge by Leo Perutz.
my review

Worst: The Defense by D.W. Buffa.
my review

#20 - The ones I listed as worst still are not finished. Life's too short to spend on books that don't catches your interest, or that drives you mad with the style or the editing.

Fiction:

Best - The Thirteenth Tale
Worst - Trace - Patricial Cornwell (What is wrong with that woman?) Is she dead and her goldfish taken over?

Be back later with nonfic

According to my rankings, the best was a tie between Gil's All-Fright Diner and The City of Dreaming Books. The worst was also a tie, this time between The Poe Shadow, Ghostwalk, and Rant.

Hmmm. Discounting rereads, here are my bests and worsts for 2007:

Best:

Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones
A Chrestomanci book that I really loved. I also liked The Pinhoe Egg a lot, but I just could not put Conrad's Fate down.

The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi
From the Old Man's War world, a beautiful book that makes me laugh out loud through one chapter and cry through the next.

Worst:

Ecstasia by Francesca Lia Block
Basically didn't make much sense, the reason for the events in the story was unexplained, it all felt very unfinished.

The Riddle of the Wren by Charles de Lint
I was expecting something interesting and this is Standard Fantasy Tale, flat and boring. The characters were Standard Fantasy Characters, the plot was Standard Fantasy Plot, it was a total disappointment and a surprise to read from the same author who wrote The Blue Girl, which I loved.

#20 - If a book is as bad as DiMaggio and Me turned out, I really will usually put it down. However, in an awkward way he seemed to be building towards something, and occasional minor encounters with DiMaggio were occasionally tossed around, so I wanted to see what his point was already.

The book was pointless, and he ended the book by harassing and pissing off DiMaggio with an obviously baseless accusation that he just wanted to "clear up." Pathetic!

I cant think of any books i would call "worst", but I'm easily pleased :)

As for best, umm, there are a few standouts for me:

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Havenstar by Glenda Noramly
Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori series
& Karen Miller’s Kingmaker/Kingbreaker duology

Best: Deathly Hallows (what PeaBee said)
Honorable mentions: His Majesty's Dragon and series, The Eyre Affair and series, and Elantris and everything else by author. All LT/GD recommendations, by the way!

Worst: Surrender by Sonya Hartnett -- had to read it for a class. I don't care if it did win Printz honors, I still hated it.
(Dis)honorable mention: Wendy by Karen Wallace. Insipid.

Nonfiction
Best: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World - a mixture of my two favorite subjects, linguistics and history.

Worst: Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game - my review says it all.

Fiction
Best: A Game of Thrones - masterful worldbuilding AND character development! Hooray!

Worst: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - the author should stick to writing footnotes. She's much better at that than she is at moving a plot along.

#20 I always fell compelled to give a book a chance to redeem itself. Sometimes it works out that the end of the book makes a poor start acceptable.

Best: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Worst: No clear bad book. The Discovery of France by Graham Robb was a book I legitimately did not like (sorry JPB) but, it wasn't a bad book so much as it was the wrong book for me.

#33 fleela, I'll second you on both A Game of Thrones (loved it!) and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I didn't even finish it. I got slightly past half way and just gave up out of sheer boredom.

My worst is one I didn't finish, just skimmed to see if there was anything of interest. My other worst is also one unfinished, Vanity Fair, but I didn't list it as THE worst, because I could see what others enjoy in it, just no for me.

37 MrsLee

I considered listing one of the books I didn't finish, but I figured that was beside the point :)

The more I think about it, I need to amend my list. I was chatting with my son about books tonight.

While the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn't my absolute favorite read, we were remembering the summer, and all of the "surrounding hoopla" and the group nature of the read (not to mention my son and I reading it at the same time across the room), make it the most memorable read of the year.

So it deserves a place on my list. There, I've made that right, lol.

Now if they could get the touchstones working.

Worst fiction: Six of my 2007 reads got 2* (none got 1) so they're jointly worst The adventures of Huckleberry Finn probably was the absolute worst though.

Why do I finish books I don't like - because they might get better, and at only 2-3 days a book it's not that much of an investment. I often don't have a TBR pile tempting me to read something else.

Best fiction: 33 works got 5* which is pretty good. Lots of Pratchett but also as seanie mentioned Awakened mage and innocent mage. However for absolute best I'll join Busifer and say Cyteen which just blew my socks off. It's the only book I've ever finished where I just couldn't stop thinking "Wow what a book" for ages afterwards.

I didn't read much non-fiction this year, and nothing really stood out either way. The science of discworld got 4* Ancestor's tale just scrapped a 3* being the best and worst respectively.

Best Graphic Novel: Apollo's Song by Osamu Tezuka / Watchmen by Alan Moore (tie)

Best Prose Fiction: About a Boy by Nick Hornby / Train Man (book Version) by Hitori Nakano

Best Non-Fiction: On Writing by Stephen King

Best Poetry: Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

Worst Graphic Novel: Infinite Crisis / Love Hina Vol. 1

Worst Burn In Hell You Evil Evil Waste of Dead Tree book: Eragon

Best of the Bad (Super Rich Fondue Dip Guilty Pleasure Award): The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft

It's a fantasy group, so I'll stick to genre:

Best: another vote for Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

Worst: don't remind me. Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. Ugh.

Best: The Longest Day

Worst: Can't think of one. I'm very forgiving.

Best: Elmer Gantry

Worst: I didn't exactly hate it, because I usually enjoy John Irving, but this one came off too forced in style for me: A Prayer for Owen Meany. I was disappointed.

This is hard 'cause I read so many good books this past year, thanks to LT.

Best Fiction: It's a tie between The Children of Hurin and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, (I like what JPB said about Harry, I agree with him, it was so much fun joining in with everybody on all the anticipation and discussion) but I have to give a nod to Crow Lake 'cause it was excellent too! It's too hard to pick just one!

Best Non-fiction: Glass Castle hands down. Excellent, excellent book.

Worst Fiction: without doubt, Tipperary, enough said, except I had to finish it because it was an ER book, otherwise I wouldn't have.

Worst Non-fiction: Didn't have one, all the non-fiction I read I enjoyed.

best was hard to pick but I'm going to have to go with Fahrenheit 451 first time I read it and I really enjoyed it.

worst - hands down Golf Unplugged my one ER book.

Best fiction: (tie)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler - amazing, engaging writing
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - this story is so sad, but it just sucks you in.

Best Nonfiction:
It's Not News, It's Fark: how mass media tries to pass crap off as news by Drew Curtis - a hilarious look at the media

Best Graphic Novel:
Hellboy: Volume 1 by Mike Mignola

Worst Fiction:
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman - I kind of liked the first two, but this one was just confusing.

Worst Nonfiction:
Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio - This woman is clearly insane! This book came very highly recommended, and I can't comprehend why. I forced myself to finish it, and it didn't kill me. That's the best I can say for it.

Worst Graphic Novel:
Emma Frost, Vol. 2 - Mind Games by Karl Bollers - The plot didn't even make sense...

Best Fiction: Stormed Fortress by Janny Wurts, with an honorable mention for Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

I can't think of a worst fiction, but worst book no matter what genre: The Collected Poems of Russell Edson. ugh.

The reason I finished that one is because it was required. No other reason on earth could have made me finish it.

Best: The Perfect Rake by Anne Gracie (absolutely hysterical Regency romance) tied with King of Shadows by Susan Cooper for YA awesomeness involving Shakespeare.

Nobody's Princess by Esther Friesner receives an honorable mention.

Worst: Lara by Bertrice Small - truly horrendous 'romantic fantasy' which ended up being fantasy porn. Completely icky.

Dishonorable mention goes to Eragon.

Worst fiction: The Emperor's Children by Claire Massud -- Literary masturbation complete with overly-effusive use of commas, semi-colons, em dashes, anything to keep a sentence from ending.

Best fiction: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen -- fabulously interesting story about the old train circuses; satisfyingly great ending.

Best non-fiction: Born on a Blue Day by Tammet -- Autobiography by a savant with Asperger's and synethesia
or The Brain That Changes Itself by Doidge -- about the newly-found plasticity of the brain that helps us relearn to do things when the body or brain is damaged
or The Good Good Pig by Montgomery -- who thought I could care about a runt pig that grows to be a giant in every way?
and too many others.

Worst non-fiction: Eat, Pray, Love by Gilbert -- prattling nonsense about a woman who seeking to find herself discovers that all she really needed was a great lay.

Best fiction: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Worst fiction: No contest - House of Leaves

Non Fiction-

Best: Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Worst: The Devil in the White City A big disappointment to me.

Best fiction, new reads: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, Pixel Juice by Jeff Noon. I liked the other two books in His Dark Materials, but The Subtle Knife was my favourite.
I have bests that I re-read this year too, including the Vurt series (all four books) by Noon and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Worst fiction: Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, Glasshouse by Charles Stross, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by Rowling. Morgan and Stross got the erase-the-ebook-toss-the-print-into-the-recycle-bin treatment from me. They're both on my never-again author list.

Nonfiction: This book is best AND worst for me at the same time: Ani's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. I've made her recipes before and I've loved them -- however -- in order to make them, you need A LOT of money invested in appliances, tools, and devices. Where I lived before I had all of these devices and they weren't expensive. But, it can be breathtakingly expensive in other areas to get access to the kinds of equipment you need to make these recipes. Best recipes ever; WORST equipment requirements.

#51 - Oh no, why did you not like The Devil in the White City? It's in my TBR pile and I don't want to read it if it isn't worth it.

Oh I loved The Devil in the White City! One of my favorites.

Well, that gives me hope then, if there are conflicting feelings about it, I have a chance of liking it!

I can't pick a best right now...

But I heartily second Minion as the absolute worst tripe I've read in a very long time. Horridly written, and a bald-faced 'set-up' novel for the rest of her series. Utter Crap.

#55 - Yes Mrs. Lee I think I'm in the minority with not liking The Devil in the White City, as I've read many stellar reviews from fellow LTers. I just cannot seem to get into it and I've been trying since Christmas. I found it unbearably dry and monotonous a little more than one third of the way through. I have tried to re-read it once so far with no luck, but I intend to try again. If I were you I'd definitely try it myself.
Curiously, I'm currently reading The Alienist and finding it to be so wonderful. It is everything The Devil in the White City could have been but is not.

#57 - "I'm currently reading The Alienist and finding it to be so wonderful. It is everything The Devil in the White City could have been but is not."

That because it's fiction.
;o)
Interestingly, I loved them both!

Yeah clamairy, after I posted I just knew someone would say that :). But the style in which they are both written is similar. I just think Devil is so dry, descriptive and plodding where Alienist is engaging. Ah, it's all subjective anyway. Who knows, with a re-read maybe by summer I will be singing The Devil's praises :)

Verrry interesting! Remember Artie Johnson from Laugh In? Say those words with his accent. :)

I will definitely leave it on my shelves to read, I just don't know when my blind-man's bluff will get to choosing it.

The best non-fiction I read last year was A Long Way Gone , although Scribbling the Cat was a close second.

I'm not sure about the best fiction. Maybe Doomsday Book.

And I have to agree about Devil in the White City. I thought the writing style was awkward. And the story it tells is so terrible that I simply couldn't finish it---though, of course, that's not the author's fault.